PopGen Genepop

Two interfaces are supplied: A general, more complex and more efficient one (GenePopController) and a simplified, more easy to use, not complete and not so efficient version (EasyController). EasyController might not be able to handle very large files, by virtue of its interface, on the other hand it provides utility functions to compute some very simple statistics like allele counts, which are not directly available in the general interface.

The more complex interface assumes more proficient Python developers (e.g., by the use of iterators) and for now it is not documented. But even for experienced Python developers, EasyController can be convenient as long as the required functionality is exposed in EasyController and its performance is deemed acceptable.

In order for the controllers to be used, Genepop has to be installed in the system, it can be dowloaded from here.

EasyController tutorial

Before we start, lets test the installation (for this you need a genepop formated file):

Replace your_file_here with the name and path to your file. If you get a IOError: Genepop not found then Biopython cannot find your Genepop executable. If Genepop is not on the PATH, you can add it to the constructor line, i.e.

ctrl = EasyController(your_file_here, path_to_genepop_here)

If everything is working, now we can go on and use Genepop. For the examples below, we will use the genepop file big.gen made available with the unit tests. We will also assume that there is a ctrl object initialized with the relevant file chosen.

We start by getting some basic info

pop_names, loci_names = ctrl.get_basic_info()

Returns the list of population names and loci names available on the file. Caveat: Most existing Genepop files provide erroneous data regarding population names. In many cases that information might not be trusted. Assessing population information is, most of the times, done by the relative position of the population in the file, not the name. So the first population is the file is index 0, the second index 1, and so on...